Hobart's Yellowstone Trail Members

Here's something for you Yellowstone Trail fans: a list of Hobart people and businesses who in December 1922 promised five years' support for the Trail's maintenance and promotion.


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Hobart News 28 Dec. 1922.

I can't index that many names, so here they are for the search engine: S.E. Henderson, O.L. Pattee, Brahst Bros., Hobart Bank, A.J. Newman, First State Bank, Albert Orcutt, Dwight Mackey, Clara Faulkner, Frank Reissig, Busse & Long, Phillips & Byall, Nick Ehrhardt, National Oil & Supply Co., Hobart Lumber Co., R.R. Peddicord, George Watkins, Roper Bros, Emil Scharbach, Hobart Filling Station.


Below that story is one about a wedding anniversary that draws our attention to some Deep-River-area history.

Mary (Ferguson) Hanna was a niece of Catherine Mereness Crisman, but her immediate family is elusive. The earliest I can find her parents, Ezra and Anna (aka Christiana) Ferguson, in a census is 1900, where they are recorded farming in Union Township, Porter County; yet they were married in Lake County in 1861 (Indiana Marriage Collection), and the Civil War draft registration records Ezra in Union Township in 1863. Mary had been born in 1862 (Indiana Death Certificates).

Thomas Hanna was born in Michigan in 1858. I find it interesting that his death certificate (1953) has a blank for his father's given name, and "Unknown" for his mother's name. Either the person who completed the certificate was a bit offhand about it, or his daughter Eva, who reported his death, did not know much about her paternal grandparents.

In the 1900 Census, which shows the Hanna family living in Hobart, Thomas gives his occupation as "R.R. Towerman." By the 1910 Census he had become a teamster — a drayman, as the article says — but the 1920 Census shows him back on the railroad, as a section worker.

Mary died in 1928. I can't find Thomas in 1930. If I've found the right person in the 1940 Census, Thomas had remarried, and his second wife was named Mary, too. I believe the second Mary Hanna died in 1950. Apparently nobody knew her maiden name at that time; from clues on Ancestry.com I'm guessing that it was Moffitt and that her first husband's surname was Smith. I think I need obituaries for all of these people if I'm ever going to figure this out.

As for this Davis Peck — the Deep River justice of the peace from 1882 — I wonder if he was any relation to the Pecks who keep showing up in those "South of Deepriver" columns, but at the moment I don't know anything about him.

… And finally, burgling the home of a grieving widower is pretty darn low.

Catherine Mereness Crisman

Catherine Mereness Crisman died in Chicago, I gather, so her remains had to be brought back to the place where she had spent much of her life, to be laid to rest with her husband in Mosier Cemetery.


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Hobart News 23 Feb. 1922.

I suppose I will have to wait for another obituary to find out if Jane Crisman Maxwell's husband was related to the Lewis and Nettie Maxwell of Deep River.

A Hodgepodge of Tidbits

A few news items that for some reason I thought needed to be in this blog, dating to mid-March 1920.


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When I saw that item about Gust Deering moving onto an Ainsworth-area farm, I thought I had never heard of him. But upon perusing my notes, I see he's figured in them twice before (though I never mentioned him in the blog), and both times because he was moving, or thinking of moving, to another farm, i.e., in January 1910:

Gust Deering who lives on the Kruse farm east of Ainsworth has rented the Wm. Bissell farm five miles east of Crown Point and will move sometime next month. We understand that James Ed Kelly who formerly lived on the Kruse farm will again occupy the place as soon as Mr. Dearing [sic] moves.

and in February 1920:

Gust Deering and family are preparing to move on to the Nightingale farm, [microfilm illegible but I think it says: formerly known as the Zeller] place containing 220 acres, located southwest of Ainsworth. They have resided on the Clinton farm for the past five years, but this farm was sold last year to D.C. Frank. Mr. Deering thought some of quitting farming, and last year bought the Thos. Hanna home in Joryville, but when his son Henry returned from the war and concluded to stay with his father on the farm, Mr. Deering thought it best to continue farming. Their other son William, is employed this winter in Gary.

So at this point I don't know anything about Gust except that he keeps changing his mind.

As for what was formerly known as the Underwood farm, if we go back to 1874 we find several parcels owned by various people with that surname, but the one directly north of the Vincent schoolhouse comprised 240 acres on the west side of Clay Street.



Concerning Lesta (not "Tesla") Raschka and her visit to Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago, the News attributed her health problems to an attack of "infantile paralysis several years ago."

"Mr. Chester" is, of course, Charles Chester.


Sources:
♦ 1874 Plat Map.
♦ "Local and Personal." Hobart News 5 Feb. 1920; 18 Mar. 1920.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 14 Jan. 1910; 19 Mar. 1920.